Disclaimer: I'm not claiming anything.

It had been half an hour and Ryan and Esposito had yet to come back. She didn't knew what the problem was, but the time they were taking was making her uneasy.

"His this her?" Alexis asked suddenly.

Kate's head snapped to look at the picture Alexis was holding out to her.

It was the one that Ryan had been able to get trough a security camera. Castle and whoever the woman was in the van.

"Yeah." Kate said, her voice breaking a little.

Alexis looked back at the picture examining it.

"What's the tattoo she has on her arm?"

Tattoo?

"What?"

Alexis nodded her head and turned the picture to her, pointing out something on the arm of the woman.

Kate took the photo from Alexis and examined it more closely. And there it was. A peek of a tattoo on the arm of the woman. Kate furrowed her eyebrows trying to understand better what exactly it was.

"It's like a..."

Alexis took the photo back from her and held it close to her face.

"It's dad's signature." she said suddenly.

"What?"

"Yeah, that's how dad signs his name."

Suddenly something clicked in Kate's brain and she reached for her phone, quickly taking it out of her pocket and speed dialing Lanie.

"Hey, girl!" Lanie greeted.

"Lanie, what's the tattoo that Nikki Strike has on her arm?"

"Oh, it's like a signature or something."

"Can you take a picture of it and send it to me?"

"Yeah, hold on a sec." Lanie hung up and after a while Kate's phone vibrated with a new message.

She quickly opened it and examined the close up picture that Lanie had sent her of Nikki Strike's tattoo.

It was the same.

Kate held her breath. It was a thin connection, almost nothing, but it could lead to something. They had to pursue every line of investigation available.

"Alexis, grab your coat. We're going on a road trip."

Kate knew this was a long shot. It was not even a long shot. In a long shot you can see your target, this was more like a shot in the dark where you just fire and wish upon a star that you hit your target.

But she had to try. She had to. She wasn't about to quit on Castle.

Alexis was sitting beside her, bitting her nails and looking outside the window.

"Do you love him?" Alexis asked suddenly making Kate choke on a breath.

"What?" was all she was able to say on a high pitched voice.

"My dad, do you love him?"

"I- I- Alexis is complicated and-"

Alexis huffed a breath.

"I hate that word." she cut her off "It's not complicated. Or you love him or you don't. It's as simple as that."

Kate sucked in a breath, deliberating what to tell Alexis.

"You know that I hated you?" she asked suddenly "When you were shot and my dad just threw himself in front of a bullet for you, just like that" she said snapping her fingers "Just like that I could have lost my father over you. He's all I got. And you should've seen how it broke him when you almost died. But he got you back, like a miracle and then he lost you again during the summer. And I watch him break a little more every day and that's when I really, really hated. He promised to me that he wouldn't go back. Said it over and over again. He would quit and he would finally get over you. And then you come back and with a couple of words there he is again. Following you like a lost puppy. And I got mad at him for it too. For being so weak. And I asked him if you made him happy and if it was enough. He said yes. So please tell me that my dad didn't broke a promise to me and jumped in front of bullets for nothing."

Kate listened, her hands gripping the wheel so tightly that her knuckles turned white, her teeth clenching with so much force that it was beginning to hurt. And it was not only her teeth that hurt.

Kate glanced at the girl that had leveled an intense stare in her direction.

"Yes." she answered finally.

"Yes?"

"Yes. I do love him." she said in a quick breath.

Alexis face opened into a slow, beaming smile.

"Good." she stated simply, resting her head on the car sit and closing her eyes briefly.

That was it?! No more judging?! No more bitterness?!

Kate kept glancing at the girl while they drove to the tattoo shop that was closest to Nikki Strike's house.

She parked the car directly in front of the shop and got out. Alexis following suit.

The tattoo shop had a little bell over the door that rang as Kate opened the it, making a tattooed girl with a a bored expression appear.

"Detective Kate Beckett, NYPD. I'm here to ask you a couple of questions."

The girl behind the counter lifted a pierced eyebrow at her.

"Am I in trouble? Because I can assure you that everything in here is a hundred percent legal."

"No, you're not in trouble. I wanted to know if this is your work or the work of any tattoo artist here."

Kate slid her thumb trough the screen of her iPhone to unlock it and pulled out the picture with Nikki Strike's tattoo.

The woman that Kate hadn't gotten the name analyzed the picture carefully and slowly nodded her head.

"Yeah, that was me."

"Do you know the two women who came by to do the tattoos?"

"Wait a second. We keep files here for matters like these."

The woman took a big dossier from under the counter and looked for the right page.

"Oh, yeah. There were too women. Nikki Strike and Harmon Strike. Sisters, I think."

Kate took out her note pad and scribbled the name on it.

"Thank you very much."

She looked at the note pad as she left with Alexis following her.

Harmon Strike.

She rolled the name around her tongue to see how it tasted. How exactly it sounded.

"Now what?" Alexis asked.

"Now we go into the precinct and do a background check on this bitch." Kate said resolutely, flinching when she swear. Alexis dismissed it with a wave of her hand, reminding her of Martha and got in the car.

Turned out Harmon Strike was a crazy person that had been submitted into the loony been after her long date boyfriend offed himself, although the M.E.. that had made his autopsy did not clear out if it had been really a suicide or a murder.

Harmon Strike had to be submitted to anti-psychotics after that. The heavy kind of drugs.

Beckett called the hospital where she had been submitted. They said that she was potentially dangerous and homicidal. They said that Harmon Strike had unstable mood swings and they suspected that she had a double personality disorder, although her shrink hadn't come to any definitive conclusion about that.

They said that somehow she had escaped and if she didn't take her meds fast, she would become an unstable person capable of unspeakable things.

She had escaped from the hospital so she didn't have a current address or a driver's license or anything for that matter. The woman was untraceable.

The boys had tried to get a GPS location on the number that had called Alexis but it was off.

So right now they were left to the hardest part of the process: the waiting.

They would have to wait for Castle to call Alexis again and wish upon a star not only that he did call again but also that he stayed on the phone long enough to trace the call.

Alexis was still going over the photos that where on the table, organizing them into piles.

Kate could see what she was doing. She was grabbing something and taking control of it. She felt lost in an uncontrollable situation and she was freaking out a little, so she took control in something small that would occupy her mind and make her feel not so lost. That was why Kate decided to join her.

"What are you doing?"

"Organizing these into piles."

"Can I help?"

Alexis looked at her and nodded her head with a tiny smile.

Kate sat beside her as she explained how she was organizing it.

"Here" she said tapping a tall pile of photos "are the ones with you and dad. Here" she tapped another pile "are the ones with dad and me. Here, the ones with dad and Grams and here are the ones with dad and detectives Ryan or Esposito. Here is dad alone and here is dad with other people."

Kate nodded and Alexis passed her half of the pictures. She began to pile them, noticing that the ones that featured her and Castle made the tallest pile by far.

They had been doing it for a while when Alexis phone went off by her side, making both the detective and the teen startle.

Alexis sucked in a breath and picked up the phone, quickly putting it on speaker.

Beckett got up and made a gesture for the guys to start tracing the call and then she got back to Alexis.

"Dad?"

"Hi, sweetie." the voice said from the other end of the line and she sighed on relief, because he sounded okay.

"Dad! You're on speaker phone. I'm with Kate."

She sucked in a breath and heard Castle do the same.

"Kate-" he breathed, his voice cracking a bit.

"Castle." she said back, not quite sure on what to say.

"Dad, we're going to find you."

"I know. I trust you."

Beckett glanced at the boys that were waiving a paper at her with victorious smiles on their faces.

"Just hold tight Castle we're coming to get you."

A/N: Just wanted to let you know that I'm aiming for 15 chapters so there will probably be 6 more of this. Also I wanted to thank NinaK.05 for the help with a very important detail, because without it I would probably still be torturing Castle.